Bookmarked

Willow looked at the computer in the corner of the library and
sighed. It had been three weeks. Three blasted weeks, and no response.

She turned the computer on, hearing the resonant hum of the
machine warming up. "Three weeks," she muttered to herself, settling into
the chair. She clicked on the PPP connection and waited for the oddly
calming jangle of the modem.

She knew that the blunt approach would have been better. It
obviously worked for Buffy, she thought to herself, sighing slightly
at the thought of Angel. But blunt just wasn't her. It could never be
her.

She opened up her inbox and began making her way through her day's
email. "So I'm a chicken," she muttered to herself. She straightened up
suddenly. "No," she said, a bit more sharply. "I'm subtle." She
collasped back into the chair and stared at the screen bleakly. So much
for email right now....She opened Netscape.

You would think he would look at his bookmarks at least
once,
she thought to herself. After all the work she had done for him, setting
up the computer, connecting it to the ISP, getting all those esoteric URLs
from Ms. Calendar....and he never used to damn thing. She clicked on the
one bookmark she had added three weeks ago. While it was uploading, she
returned to her email. She scrolled down through her mailing list
digests, the various pieces of spam....She froze suddenly. "No....it
couldn't be...."

She clicked on the file, still not believing it.

"Willow. Found the bookmark on my browser. An interesting
proposal. Shall we set a date? 8 o'clock tomorrow? Giles."

Willow leaned back against her chair, trying to put some thoughts
together. After some time, she shouted. "Yes!"

"Giles, you must have seen that site twenty times. Aren't you
ready yet?"

"I just don't know, Willow. I mean, it's all so new-"

"And that's exactly why you should do it. Don't you want to
be known as an innovator in...Watching?"

"Well....um....I don't understand how this will change
things."

Willow sighed tiredly. "Having a small website will let other
researcher of paranormal phenomenon know what's going on here in
Sunnydale.
You just have to set up the basics."

Giles looked at the computer petulantly. "Why can't you do
it?" he asked.

"Because I'm not a Watcher, Giles. I don't know all your
secret passwords or handshakes or whatever."

"We don't have handshakes....we just have a few passwords and
rings...." Giles frowned when he realized he was babbling. "Anyways," he
said, shaking his head. "Must we really do this?"

Willow sunk into the nearby chair. "Giles, it was hard enough
for you to get e-mail. You wanted this website, so gosh darn it, I'm not
wasting another Saturday making excuses for you!"

Giles lifted his head to look at her, opened his mouth to
protest,
then thought better of it once he saw the look on her face. Just humor
her, Rupert. You can't expect the girl to be a Watcher if you don't make
it seem interesting. "Well, he finally said, after looking back at
the
computer. "Shall we start?"

Willow collapsed into a nearby chair, grinning. It had been a
stressful three hours, but, finally, after several false starts, HTML and
UNIX errors, and countless explanations ("No, Giles, you have to chmod
everything before you can see it. It allows people to view it."), they
had finally done it. Willow looked over at Giles affectionately, taking a
certain, almost motherly pride in seeing him scroll through the small
introductory page they had set up.

Giles noticed her looking at him and smiled, revealing the
overly
curious schoolboy he must have been. "This is really quite...different,"
he said. He pointed to the short HTML document. "We spent three hours
making that little thing?"

Willow smiled, an ironic tilt to her lips. "If you had just done
what I said, it would have taken less time."

Giles was about to retort, but was interrupted by the library
doors opening. "Hey you two," said Ms. Calendar. "What's going on?"

Willow looked up at Ms. Calendar, grinning. "Giles just got a
website."

Ms. Calendar looked at Giles in stunned happiness. "Really?
Oh...Wow!" She quickly made her way over to the computer. "Let me see!"

Giles pointed to the screen. Jenny looked at the site, then
looked at Giles, grinning. "What a great beginning!" She kissed him on
the top of his head, then turned to Willow. "How long did it take?"

Willow shrugged. "Oh, not long, " she said cheerfully. "Only
three hours or so."

Jenny mouthed "Three hours?" back at Willow, then grinned
again.
"Congrats, Willow. You just helped Rupert into the 21st century."

This Angel/Buffy the Vampire Slayer story was written by Kate Bolin. If you liked it, there's plenty more at http://www.dymphna.net/fanfic/. And you can feedback her at dymphna@dymphna.net.